Lesson 12 November 29 th, 2010

 Telescope - an optical device that provides enlarged images of distant objects.  Dutch spectacle-maker Hans Lippershey discovered that two lenses would magnify an object more than just one lens when one of his apprentices held up two lenses in front of his eyes

 Lippershey placed the lenses at either end of a tube and in 1608 took his invention to the Dutch government. It was kept a secret as it was thought to be an advantage for warfare.  Hans told the Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei. Galileo than made the then made a telescope that could magnify 30 times and was the first person in history to see the mountains on the moon.

 Galileo discovered that four moons orbited the planet Jupiter.  His discovery provided evidence that the Sun was the centre of the solar system rather than Earth.  The race began for producing the best telescope possible. Many different designs were attempted but soon everyone realized that colours refract different colours of light differently.

There are two main reasons why it is difficult to see an object that is far away.  One reason is that any distant object appears very small.  The farther away an object is, the dimmer it becomes.

 A telescope uses either a concave mirror or a convex lens that is much larger than human eyes so that it can gather more light. This is why some telescopes are so large, not to magnify better, but to collect more light.

There are two main types of telescopes: refracting telescopes and reflecting telescopes..

Refracting Telescopes  A refracting telescope is similar in design to a microscope, in that they both have two lenses, one on each end of a long tube.

 Because the object viewed with a telescope is far away, the objective lens has a very long focal length which is needed for viewing objects very far away. Refracting telescopes are often used by amateur astronomers because of their portability.  Disadvantages - heavy lens and the lenses absorb some of the light that passes through them.

 The largest telescopes are built using mirrors because mirrors do not absorb light.  In a reflecting telescope, light enters from one end of a tube and then reflects off of a concave mirror toward a small plane mirror. This small mirror directs the light into an eyepiece, camera, or other instrument.

 A camera is a lightproof box with a lens at one end to form a real, inverted image on a light detector or light-sensitive plate or film.  For a distant object, the image distance di is equal to the focal length of the lens. For nearer objects, the lens must be moved farther from the light detector so that the image is still focussed.

 A shutter controls the length of time light is allowed in.  The diaphragm is the part of the camera that controls the aperture.  The aperture is the opening that the light passes through. The larger the aperture, the greater the amount of light that can be collected by the camera. Almost all cameras use a convex lens to refract light rays onto a light detector

 The image is usually recorded digitally on a charge coupled device and stored on a memory chip that can be transferred to a computer, printer, or other electronic device.

 The farther away an object is, the dimmer it is and the fewer the light rays that can reach the camera  A telephoto lens increases the amount of light that is collected and magnifies a distant object. A telephoto lens has a long focal length, which is why it protrudes so far in front of the camera

 A wide-angle lens is essentially the opposite of a telephoto lens.  It has a short focal length which captures a wider angle of view. The shape of a wide angle lens is more spherical and has a shorter focal length than a telephoto lens. Cellphone cameras usually have a wide-angle lens

 Some of the most important advances in health care during the last few hundred years has been the result of our ability to view the microscopic world, both directly through microscopes and indirectly through images.  Seeing living things smaller than could be the scene with the naked eye lead to one of the single most important improvements in human history, the importance of washing hands.

 In a compound microscope, a pair of convex lenses causes a small object to appear magnified when viewed through the eyepiece.  The specimen is placed on a glass slide and then illuminated with a light source. Light travels through the objective lens, which is a convex lens at the bottom of the tube close to the specimen.

 Like a simple magnifying glass, the lens forms an upright enlarged image of the object when the object being viewed is less than one focal length from the lens.  By using a second convex lens in the eyepiece, a magnification of hundreds or thousands of times can be achieved

 A laser is an optical device that produces a form of light in which all the light rays are almost perfectly parallel, all have the same wavelength, and all of the wave crests and troughs are exactly lined up.

 Laser light is very different from incandescent light, which is usually a jumble of different wavelengths with the wave crests and troughs arranged randomly.  Lasers are used in communication devices, consumer devices, bar code readers, DVD players, cancer detection, and surgery.

 1. What is the difference between a shutter and an aperture?  2. How does the focal length of a wide-angle lens compare to the focal length of a telephoto lens?  3. What lenses are used in a compound microscope?  4. Why is the image you view through a microscope upside down?  5. Why are some telescopes very large?  6. What are two main types of telescopes?